Michael Winship: GOP, Gov. Walker living in states of denial

Friday

Feb 25, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 25, 2011 at 9:34 PM

Although Gov. Walker claims Wisconsin is in desperate financial straits, according to Madison’s Capital Times newspaper, the state “has managed so well, in fact, that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently released a memo detailing how the state will end the 2009-11 budget biennium with a budget surplus.”

Michael Winship

Forced at gunpoint this weekend to clean out a lot of old paper files in anticipation of some home improvements, I ran across some articles and obituaries I had saved following the death, a little more than five and a half years ago, of the late, great Ann Richards, former governor of Texas.

One of them related the story of how Gov. Richards was approached by the American Civil Liberties Union, which was disturbed by the presence of a Christmas creche on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin, Texas.

“You know,” she replied, “that’s probably as close as three wise men will ever get to the Texas Legislature, so why don’t we just let them be.”

Over the years, many have debated whether Texas is indeed the rightful landlord of the nation’s worst statehouse. As someone with a mother’s Lone Star blood flowing through his otherwise anemic Northeastern veins, I write this with no small amount of perverse pride. But lately, a lot of other states have been giving Texans a run for their money.

This month, the Utah Senate passed a bill that would make the Browning M1911 semiautomatic pistol the state’s official firearm. In Missouri, state Sen. Jane Cunningham has introduced a bill that would, in the words of progressive website ThinkProgress.org, “dramatically claw back” state child labor restrictions.

South Dakota was contemplating — but just tabled, thank goodness — a bill that critics feared would expand the definition of justifiable homicide to include the murder of doctors who provide abortions. Idaho is debating a bill to nullify President Obama’s health care reform. And in Arizona, legislators are sponsoring one that would allow the state to nullify any federal law it doesn’t particularly care for.

I would ask what’s gotten into them, but I think we all know. As noted by Tim Storey, senior fellow of the National Conference of State Legislatures, since the midterm elections, “There are now more Republican state legislators (3,941) than at any point since they held 4,001 seats after the 1928 election ... 22 state legislative chambers changed majority control in the 2010 election cycle — all in the direction of the GOP.” Many of the newly elected members were endorsed by tea party organizations or have rushed to embrace the tea party’s inchoate, right-wing agenda.

In so doing, they have opened a Pandora’s box of legislative mayhem that not only plays to the social conservatism that would return us to the days of Cotton Mather and the ducking stool, but which also uses the tea partiers’ lust to slash spending as a dodge — not to balance budgets and eliminate deficits, as they claim, but to further stifle government and other institutions dedicated to the common good.

This is supremely manifest in renewed efforts by governors and statehouses across the country to enact right-to-work laws and restrict wages and benefits for members of public service employee unions.

According to the AFL-CIO, legislators in at least 11 states are proposing anti-union laws that would cut pay and lower standards of living for workers. (Full disclosure: I am the president of a union affiliated with the AFL-CIO.)

This push most dramatically has come to a head in Wisconsin where, in the name of austerity, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker is attempting to stamp out public workers’ collective bargaining rights.

His attack on the unions — including a threat to call out the National Guard — has been met by outrage and a mass exodus of Democratic legislators out of the state, thus denying Republicans a quorum at the Wisconsin Senate in Madison, Wis.

Although Gov. Walker claims Wisconsin is in desperate financial straits, the state had been coping better than most and, according to Madison’s Capital Times newspaper, “has managed so well, in fact, that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently released a memo detailing how the state will end the 2009-11 budget biennium with a budget surplus.”

The paper editorialized, “Unfortunately, Walker has a political agenda that relies on the fantasy that Wisconsin is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.”

It’s all part of that notorious separate reality in which Republicans and the right have taken up seemingly permanent residence. Democrats can hope the other side has overreached. The party will fight to win back the many seats they’ve lost in the states.

But then again, as another wise elder of Texas politics once said, if you took all the fools out of the legislature, it would no longer be a representative body.

Michael Winship, a native of Canandaigua, N.Y., is former senior writer of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS and president of the Writers Guild of America, East.